This invention relates to a twisted yarn obtained by twisting a plurality of bundled, untwisted sheaves of staple fibers with a small number of finishing twists, and to a method of producing the twisted yarn.
Conventionally, ordinary highly bundled spun yarns or worsted yarns having high bulkiness, a loose twist and softness have been produced by spinning a single yarn with a small number of twists by use of the ordinary ring spinning process, then doubling a plurality of single yarns thus formed and then applying a finishing twist to the resulting yarn in a direction opposite to the direction of twist of the single yarns, in order to detwist them and remove their initial twist.
However, since the conventional method requires numerous production steps such as rewinding, doubling and twisting after the single yarn is spun by use of a ring spinning frame having low spinning efficiency, such method requires a great deal of labor and energy, resulting in high production cost.
To reduce production cost, an attempt has been made to make use of a single loosely twisted yarn of high bulky yarn, but there is an inevitable restriction to the lower limit of the number of twists in conjunction with the ends down of the spun yarn. Another problem with this method is that the surface quality is poor when a knitted fabric is produced. Further, the attainable bulkiness is lower than that of two folded yarn. For this reason, this method has not been generally employed.